Jeffrey V. Dunn

Dunn represents public agency clients in California's continuing battles over water rights. He likes to quote from a 1980 state Supreme Court opinion that noted, "The scope and technical complexity of issues concerning water resource management are unequaled by virtually any other type of activity presented to the courts." Drought and a further accumulation of case law since then only magnified the problem — until last year. A coordinated group of cases Dunn litigated for more than a decade involving 110,000 acre feet of water worth $1 billion served as a template for new state groundwater management legislation that could ease matters. Antelope Valley Groundwater Cases, JCCP 4408 (filed Oct. 22, 2005).

The massive complex litigation was venued in Los Angeles County Superior Court before a now-retired Santa Clara County complex litigation judge, Jack Komar, and with a Sacramento appellate justice, Ronald B. Robie, who's a former head of the Department of Water Resources, serving as mediator.

"California historically has had no statutory authority over groundwater at all," Dunn said. "Yet from gold mining days to the development of agriculture here, water law issues have always been front and center. The issues go back even further to when Spain granted water rights to the pueblos of Los Angeles and San Diego."

After six phases of trial spread over many years and involving more than 70,000 landowners, Dunn obtained a landmark judgment in December 2015. It provided a secure groundwater supply for hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses in Los Angeles and Kern counties and for Edwards Air Force Base. "The case became the leading example for future groundwater disputes and its lessons learned were applied in last year's historic groundwater legislation, including new civil procedures for more streamlined adjudications of water rights," Dunn said. "Gov. Brown devised legislation to manage these groundwater basins. The Legislature actually used Antelope Valley as a case study in designing the new statutes."

Dunn was co-lead counsel for another long-running groundwater rights dispute in which an appellate panel held for the first time that landowner groundwater rights do not have to be quantified until the groundwater basin is in an overdraft condition. "This was a difficult case also handled at the trial level partly by Judge Komar," said Dunn, who represented the plaintiff municipality. "The outcome was a big deal in the water world. It will help agencies use court processes to manage water rights without delays spent first adjudicating everybody's property rights." City of Santa Maria v. Adam, H041133 (Cal. App. 6th Dist. June 24, 2016).

— John Roemer